If you ask Chicago’s powers that be why their gun control-heavy city is plagued by “gun violence” they have a simple answer: it wazzunt me! Chicago’s Mayor, Police Superintendent, City Council members and the rest of the town’s status quo statist apparatus contend that all would be well if they could stop guns from coming into the city from outside of Chicago. As if erecting a police cordon around the city limits would starve The Windy City’s gang bangers of gats and eliminate the firearms-related murderous mayhem Chicago is known for. (Not to give them ideas.) Short of that, they want the rest of the country to adopt their gun control laws. More specifically, the cites, towns and states surrounding Chicago. Which is why . . .

In an unusual lawsuit filed July 7, Bosley and Nance-Holt claim their civil rights have been violated by three suburban governments that they say do not adequately regulate gun shops near the Chicago border. The suit argues that weapons sold at these stores are responsible for too much of the violence that disproportionately afflicts this poor, black corner of Chicago.

The suit is “unusual” in the sense of dumb and doomed. I wonder which gun control organization has put the two Chicago moms up to this PR stunt. Meanwhile, the Washington Post‘s Tom Rowley and the paper’s photo editor do everything in their power to legitimize the effort. For example . . .

Critics say the two mothers are stretching the definition of civil rights too far, and are urging the court to dismiss the case. Either way, the suit is timely: Although Chicago recorded the fewest killings in nearly 50 years in 2013, the homicide rate has since been on the rise, darting up 20 percent in the first half of this year.

More people are getting shot in other cities, as well. Police departments in New York, Washington and Milwaukee, among others, are dealing with more killings this year than last. Criminologists caution against a national explanation, especially because homicide rates have decreased in some cities, including Los Angeles. They say local factors, such as shifting gang dynamics and changes in police stop-and-frisk tactics, probably are a factor.

See how that works? The civil rights suit against surrounding cities attempting to force suburbs to “crack down” on gun dealers may – I say may – be frivolous, but the problem is not! In his effort to exploit the moms for the Post’s ceaseless anti-gun agenda, Rowley completely ignores the central issue. Never once does he mention that the gun stores named in the suit are selling legal products legally, catering to their customers’ natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms.

Rowley is tying himself up in knots here. On one hand, he argues that Chicago’s firearms-related homicide rate is no biggie. That it’s unrelated to gun store sales and not that bad when seen in context. On the other hand, he’s promoting the civil rights lawsuit as necessary, complete with the usual bloody shirt waving anecdotes. He’s not the only one trying to split the aforementioned baby.

So, although Garry McCarthy, the city’s superintendent of police, does not know the full details of the lawsuit, he welcomes its intent.

“If we were to get gun dealers to be much more stringent in their sales, it would help us enormously,” he said, adding that “short-term fluctuations” in the homicide rate are inevitable until the number of guns coming into the city decreases.

Together, they blame the three villages, Lyons, Lincolnwood and Riverdale, for what they call a “flood” of guns into the city. On average, police have recovered a gun sold at Chuck’s Gun Shop in Riverdale every day for the past 10 years, McCarthy said. Gun shops in the three villages — together with another store in Indiana — supplied almost a fifth of all firearms found at Chicago crime scenes from 2009 to 2013, according to a report published last year by the mayor’s office.

The villages must clamp down on their shops, the mothers say, by insisting on security cameras, employee background checks and training staff members to detect people buying guns for third parties.

I smell Bloomberg. That’s the exact same “gun dealers’ code” mooted by the billionaire ballistic bully boy’s moribund Mayors Against Illegal Guns back in the day. The funny (peculiar) thing about this lawsuit: the gun dealers named probably already have security cameras and certainly train staff members to detect so-called straw purchases – if only because they know the ATF or anti-gunners are likely to send bogus shoppers into their store to catch a blatant violation.

So what’s the point of all this? To provide an excuse for the civilian disarmament industrial complex to spread anti-gun fear and loathing amongst the general population. Thanks to the Washington Post, mission accomplished. I wonder if the judge will ding the Moms for court costs . . .

How about they sue Chicago for not taking care of it’s gang problem as a civil rights issue? Why would you sue gun shops who don’t shoot anybody? One of these is a lawsuit that will actually solve the problem, the other is just a political statement.

Well, unlike this lawsuit, that would actually be a logical case to be tried in court holding politicians who campaign to decrease crime and violence and police chiefs who promise to enforce the law accountable for their actions and the money the taxpayers pay them to do the stuff they promised.

If the “ease” of purchasing guns in surrounding communities is the “cause” of Chicago’s high homicide rate, why don’t those surrounding communities have homicide rates even higher than Chicago’s — where the guns are essentially banned? The “logic” of these moms and there behind the scenes sponsors is completely inverted. If the guns cause the problem then the cities where the guns are more readily available should demonstrate MORE of that problem, not less.

That’s the MO of Obama’s America: So long as it feels good and helps atone for the sin of America’s racism and injustice towards non-whites, then it’s the right proper thing to do even though it’s completely insane and destructive.

” So long as it feels good and helps atone for the sin of America’s racism and injustice towards non-whites”

Just like with the voter ID in Texas. Liberals are going into a frenzy that it is illegal to impede the right to vote by demanding ID to exercise a right. They are saying it is an unconstitutional infringement on a right because of the unnecessary fees and the cost of transportation. By this logic if owning a gun was an American right, all the permits, background checks and gunfree zones are illegal. Equal justice would be nice.

If only the POTG weren’t such cowards and declared no more compromise, maybe we would have a right and not a government privilege.

NOT TRUE Mark N.-I live in Cook co.and I can buy any Ar/Ak or such gun-only SOME few anti-suburbs have bans…I live in (perhaps) the most pro-gun town south of Chicago…it’s not paradise but better than NJ,Maryland,Cali,NY,and several other states. Shall-issue CCL too. Chicago proper sucks…

Okay, there are three things wrong with what you just said;
1. You argued that guns in these surrounding communities were “essentially banned”. When in reality any law-abiding citizen can purchase one at a gun store. Why would Chuck’s Gun Shop operate in an area that bans gun sales?
2. The idea that gun control people assume guns are the primary cause of all violence. Contrary to what many pro-gunners think, gun control proponents don’t think guns exert some kind of mind control that makes people violent. The reason there is gang violence in Chicago is due to a wide variety of social and economic challenges that create such a culture. The gun control argument really stipulates, ” A gun won’t make someone violent, but a violent person with a gun is more dangerous.” After all, why are guns so much better at self defense than say, a knife? (This of course is a more general rule of thumb, that can still vary situationally.)
3. There is a very simple reason why Chicago’s gun laws don’t work; it’s the reason these mothers are talking about. Its the proximity to suburbs with much more lenient gun laws. And let me explain how the process works. A gun runner (whose never committed a crime and so is technically a law abiding citizen according to NICS) buys multiple guns at Chuck’s Gun Shop, passes the background check, and drives into Chicago with them. He then calls or gets in contact with a criminal he knows, sells the guns to the criminal, who then resells the guns to other criminals in illegal street deals. That’s where black market guns, or the majority of them, come from, and that’s how most criminals get their guns through anonymous “street deals.” This isn’t hard to figure out. Incidentally, this is also why some Dems wanted to limit purchases to one gun a month because they know this is how gangbangers get guns. Not that they’re fully aware of this process, and not that I have any sympathy for people who are determined to kill each other, but if you ever wanted to know how the black market for guns worked, this is how. Sorry for the long post btw. I just wanted to cover all my bases.

Perhaps this “mother” and those that ignorantly think like her should just be sued for being lousy mothers. Perhaps if they raised their children better, taught them to have respect for others, kept them in school long enough so that they could learn to do something with their lives instead of peddling drugs on a street corner their lives would not be cut so short. Instead however they prefer to act like poster childs of victimization instead of accepting personal fault for lousy choices they made.

Nathaniel, you seem to be genuine in trying to make an informative contribution to the discussion. For that, my thanks.

I have a question for you about #3. How do you come to know that this particular channel is the predominant mode of trafficking? E.g., if you have friend who is an armorer for the Crypts then you might have quite good inside info.

My belief is that gun diversion from the legitimate market to the black market is like a sieve with many hole; no one hole is predominant. Were that true then gun-control at point-of-sale would be futile. Constrain one hole and the others would pick-up the slack. I might be wrong. Suppose you are correct that the main channel of diversion is lots of small-time traffickers patronizing FFLs. If so, then choking off that one main channel could reduce somewhat the flow of guns.

Whatever the reality is, knowing the relative flow of guns through each channel will empower us to counter the Anti’s proposals. E.g., they claim gun shows are important. We think criminals do not buy their guns at gun-shows. Yet, perhaps, OFWGs buy guns at gun shows and traffic them in the ghetto. We don’t think so; but we can’t rule-it-out.

I have read a credible study that suggests that stolen guns provide most of the black-market supply. Black market prices are too low to be explained by diversion from FFL sales at retail prices. The number of guns reported as stolen seem to be sufficient to supply the black market. Now, suppose that we could confirm that stolen guns are the primary channel of supply. What would the policy implications be?

Second, it’s clear that safe-storage by individual owners is the only means of choking off that supply channel.

Third, we should want to know the circumstances of the thefts. Were the guns: left in a locked car; left on a nightstand; hidden in a closet; locked in a gun safe not secured to the building; etc.?

Fourth, we can all learn something useful. E.g., maybe its that a gun safe must be made of heavy gauge steel and screwed into the floor/wall of the building. Maybe we would learn that we must install gun safes in our cars or not leave guns in our cars at all when we have to enter a gun-free zone.

Fifth, uninformed voters might begin to question whether they want GFZs more than they want to prevent guns from being stolen from cars or homes because gun owners can’t carry them while on their usual errands.

From the published data, something like 80% of guns are obtained by criminals from sources (friends/family, on the street) that do not inform us about the channel of diversion. We don’t know if the diversion point was a burglary, straw-buyer, straw-buyer working for a trafficker, corrupt FFL employee or something else. Opening a “non-stocking FFL” in the inner-city to cater to burglars and straw-buyers isn’t going to make UBC work.

UBC could ONLY target a non-FFL seller who has a reputation to protect. E.g., a “collector” or more appropriately a trader who buys guns regularly whenever he has the opportunity to pick-up a bargain and then sells those guns at a modest profit to buyers he doesn’t know – or doesn’t care about their intentions. No doubt, this is a possible channel; that it is a significant channel is highly doubtful given the small profit to be turned in trading guns. (Buy a used gun at $200 and sell it for $300. How can you make a living at this?)

So true about Shore in lincolnwood. I tried to get them to give me a price on a shotgun once and they asked me why I needed a gun like that. It took 15 minutes for them to finally give me a price that was way too high. If you’re not a cop you can basically go screw yourself. So how are these gang members getting guns from this shop???

“So, although Garry McCarthy, the city’s superintendent of police, does not know the full details of the lawsuit, he welcomes its intent.

“If we were to get gun dealers to be much more stringent in their sales, it would help us enormously,”

Again with the BS that gun store owners are these bloodthirsty mercenaries who will stop at nothing to arm every person who walks in their stores. If a person passes a background check, thus showing that he is not a threat to society with a firearm, what more does this Chicago political hack appointee of a cop want? To continue to withhold the sale of a guns until the buyer pays off the right people? Yeah, that’s probably it. That’s the Chicago way.

Your dead wrong. I agree with the spirit of their action. So, since I live in Chicago, I am going to sue all the thug moms for ruining the city and seek restitution for pain, suffering, off of property value, and general malaise.

Oh man so much BS. In answer to an above query-Riverdale (the home of Chucks gun shop) is NOT a nice safe place. Very similar to the southside of Chiraq.(really just an extension). But Chucks is above board and very strict in who they sell to-their clientele is mostly black. I don’t know why they don’t just pick up and move away(from fadda pfhegma and jesse j. and BS lawsuits like this…THESE gals need to pay when they lose.

I am still trying to figure out how this case gets to first base. Generally, only governmental entities and actors are subject to the civil rights actions, with exceptions for discrimination based on a prohibited characteristic (race, religion, national origin, etc.). Obviously a guns store is a private business and not a governmental entity, so that is out. Nor does this seem to be a case of a hate crime or discriminatory animus. So how do they get standing?

I am not so certain that this suit will be thrown out. The Supreme Court recently approved of the doctrine of “disparate Impact”. You do not have to show an intent or any illegality. All you have to show is that a protected group has a statistically “disparate” undesired outcome.

The act is “Guns are sold”. The outcome is “Black people kill each other more than white people.”

Isn’t that a “disparate impact”. It is utter Bovine Feces under any rational, consideration, but “disparate impact” is not about any rational consideration. It is all about how to reward a favored group, no matter what.

“Disparate impact” (which has actually been around for some time) is a way if establishing liability for illegal discrimination without proof of discriminatory intent; however, the claim must be premised on some statute that prohibits discrimination of the type identified in the claim. What is the statute and where is the discrimination? As I understand the article, these women claim that the laws in effect in these neighboring communities are NOT stiff enough, not that the gun stores are violating some statute. I assume, without seeing the complaint, that the “disparate impact” is a claim that more blacks die from “gun violence.” Of course, the gun stores cannot refuse to sell to blacks, as that would be discrimination, and if regulations were imposed that made it disproportionately likely that blacks could not buy guns at these stores, that would be a “disparate impact.” The logical link missing is that the gun stores are NOT accused of selling guns illegally, the only claim being that they sell guns that show up at crime scenes, from which an inference is sought to be drawn that they must be selling guns illegally, a proposition that is not logically mandated, since any of these guns could have been loaned, stolen, or sold in the street to someone other than the original purchaser, breaking any “causal” chain, independent of the fact that the store is not responsible for the criminal misconduct of persons buying their products.

Ah, yes: disparate impact – that legal theory under which at least one court has ruled that employers cannot verify immigration status of potential employees, because doing so would cause disproportionate employment discrimination based on race.

Is there any report on investigations, prosecutions and convictions for “straw-buying” cases? No? I didn’t think so.

What are these stores expected to do? Hang a sign in the window: “No guns for Negros”?

I’m torn on the issue of FFLs “policing” sales of guns. I’m inclined to defend a dealer who decides that his “gut” is telling me to forego the profit on a sale to a particular prospective customer.

And yet, on the other hand, if there is a right to arms than that implies a right to buy arms. In some sense then, a LGS is like a “place of public accommodation”. How would we view a gun-shop owner who outright refused to sell any gun to anyone who is Black? How would we view the proprietors of gun-shops in an area (e.g., surrounding Chicago) who all refused to sell to Blacks?

If NICS is our society’s standard for discriminating between the 2A-able vs. the 2A-disabled, then how can we demand LGSs become judges-of-character of all their customers?

Funny you should ask, Mark.. The owner of an Inverness, FL gun store is being investigated by DOJ for civil rights violations after declaring his store a “Muslim Free Zone”. If I recall, a woman in AR is being subjected to similar treatment for doing the same with her gun store.

Even that is iffy. Their sons civil rights may or may not have been violated, depending on the circumstances. If you are killed during commission of a crime, you may have voluntarily surrendered your civil rights.

So, by their own admission, less than 20% (“almost a fifth”) of the guns used in Chicago crimes come from neighboring communities, yet they decide to crack down on a tiny minority of legal gun shops rather than address the much more important issue of where more than 80% of the guns are coming from. Lunacy.

Golly gee Bullwinkle! You don’t suppose it’s because the thugs and punks try to travel the minimum distance to find a gun shop outside Chicago, do you? Last I looked there were no real gun shops in Chicago proper. They’re all located in suburbs like Riverdale, Lyon, etc (also know as part of “Chicagoland”).

I’d challenge the mom’s lawyers to show that if these shops didn’t exist the problem would would cease instead of moving further out from Chicago to the next nearest dealers. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does any market that is deprived of a high-demand product, be it guns, drugs or fireworks. People will travel to obtain them and bring them back.

The claim is a case study in every way to *not* have a valid claim. I hope this ends similar to the other frivolous suit, with a judge awarding costs to the defendants after the directed verdict / 12(b)(6) (didn’t read to see what court this horsesqueeze is being brought in).

Nope the lucky gunner suit was and now that the family lost the Brady campaign has left the family high and dry to foot the bill. Gotta love progressives use people and don’t stick around to clean up the mess

Having thankfully moved out of Chicago it never ceases to surprise me at how the left will use minorities to cry on air or int he papers about the loss of their “babies”. Having grown up in a lousy neighborhood I am all too well aware of the fact that a lot of these “babies” were street corner thugs, gang bangers of the worst variety, drug dealing bastards who would just as happily steal from their own mothers as they would I or anyone else. It is why I am grateful to be able to have the choice to exercise my 2nd Amendment Right to defend myself if need be, for though I know longer live in Chicago I do have to travel through it in order to get to my job. I really do think if these “parents” who at times I think are just trying to get something out of a tragedy, spent as much time rearing their kids with the same vigor that they mourn them there would be less violence.

I’m confused. If you can positively trace the gun back to the shop it was sold from, how can you not find and potentially prosecute the original buyer if they did something illegal like being a straw purchaser? I’m betting they aren’t really tracing these guns to these shops but it is easy to pin it on these shops because they are the closest. Gang bangers must have never heard of Cabela’s.

It seems to me that the Chicago Police Department would order a trace on every illegal gun they find; unless, of course, they know that they don’t want to find the crime lead.

I suspect that a large minority, if not a small majority, of crime guns originate from straw-buys. The relationship between the criminal vs. the straw-buyer may range from immediate (brother, girlfriend) to distant (trafficker).

If the relationship is immediate then it becomes a fairly straightforward matter to trace the relationship. If you have the criminal then you establish that the buyer knew the criminal and knew of his criminal background. Transferring to a (known or believed to be) criminal is a felony.

If the relationship is distant then the problem is less straightforward. You probably aren’t going to make the trace between the straw-buyer and the criminal. However, you have the name of a suspected straw-buyer. All the police would need to do is call on the FFLs in the region asking if they sold any guns to the suspect. If more than one or two, you have a suspected trafficker.

If the police or ATF were interested in straw-buying or trafficking these cases wouldn’t be difficult to investigate and prove. Why are they not pursuing them?

I have witnessed a straw-purchase at Cabelas in Hammond,Indiana. I notified ’em and they were clueless(4 young black men walk in (with their pants on the ground)-one homie counting a giant wad of cash (in the shotgun shell aisle)-one guy buys gun and the 3 homies lurk elsewhere. But maybe I’m jus’ racis’…

Good on GAT! I bought a magazine about 4 years ago from them-about 60 miles from me. They also support the 2nd and NRA big time. So does Cabelas but the old guys working the counter are truly CLUELESS…and don’t care.

My first thought was “Well, somebody bought all those guns, then took them into Chicago where they we founds at crime scenes. I checked about how well Chicago prosecutes gun crimes:

“But President Obama did not tell this group that Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) shows that the Northern Illinois district ranked 90th out of 90 in prosecutions of federal weapons crimes per capita.
David Burnham, co-director of TRAC, states their analysis says that according to case-by-case U.S. Justice Department information obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, there were 52 federal gun prosecutions in Illinois North (Chicago) in 2012, or 5.52 per million in population.
By this measure, compared with the 90 federal judicial districts in the U.S., the prosecution rate in Chicago was the lowest in the country.

In Chicago, most people convicted of illegal gun possession are getting the minimum, one year, the Sun-Times analysis found.

For the more serious charge of being a felon in possession of a gun, the minimum sentence is two years in prison. The maximum is 10 years.

In Chicago, felons illegally possessing a gun typically get four years, the Sun-Times found — toward the low end of the state sentencing guidelines.

And those are the sentences judges hand out, not the actual prison time. Most people convicted of these gun crimes serve less than half of their prison terms because of “good time” that inmates can get credit for under state law, in addition to credit for time held in the Cook County Jail while awaiting trial.

New York, by comparison, has a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 3 1/2 years for simple gun possession.